No more governor, so it's full speed ahead with Valerie Bertinelli and Kerry Butler

"I care less about Elliot Spitzer's dick than I do about health care!" boomed a female voice in the back room of Benson restaurant. It was Valerie Bertinelli, the One Day at a Time star and Jenny Craig client who's a lot tougher than the steak I was digging into at that moment. Reminded that this was a promo event for her Ladies Home Journal cover, my pal Val smilingly responded: "I never call myself a lady. I'm a broad!" The broad was pissed at "Kristen" and all the other hos who don't care whose marriage they may be complicit in screwing for a few bucks and a mint on the pillow. "I want to strangle them," said Bertinelli, whose memoir, Losing It, is topping the charts right now. " 'Why are you doing this to another woman? A man isn't worth that. Bitch!' "

I love this little TV icon, so I pulled her aside for some private bitching, one question at a time. Me: "When you divorced Eddie Van Halen, did you feel like you were losing 180 pounds?" She: "No. He's still around! We still co-parent. So I only lost the 40 pounds." Me: "I loved when you told your fellow weight-loss emblem Oprah you'd kissed a woman and asked her if she ever had. Did you believe her when she said no?" She: "Oprah doesn't lie. That's why we love her. I'm going to see Gayle later today and I'll ask her too. Kidding!"

Me: "Speaking of which, why didn't you read for the part of Ross's lesbian wife on Friends when you were asked to?" She: "I thought I was too fat to be next to those other women. I had self-esteem issues." Me: "Did anyone advise you against taking such a role?" She: "No! I've played lesbians before." Me: "Me too!"

Andy Kropa

Butler did it—this time in Xanadu.

Details

We kept eating (salmon for Val, more steak for me) as the ladies-who-lunch piped in with queries about her hair treatments and ex-husband care. "Eddie called me," revealed Val, "and thanked me for not throwing him under the bus with the book. His girlfriend read it, he hasn't—he's not a reader. She said: 'You're an inspiration. I feel like I'm living your life now, and you've given me hope.' " I left in an appreciative glow, but a little frustrated, unable to invoke my favorite utterance: "Bitch!"

I was luminescent all over again on meeting Kerry Butler, a broad who's always seemed loudly underappreciated, though she's given me hope with performances from Hairspray to Little Shop of Horrors. But with Xanadu, the contagious spoof of the craptastic Olivia Newton-John fantasy, she's taken her patented ditzy-blonde-with-sense routine and turned disbelievers into worshippers at her feathered curls. Kerry skates away with the show, laying on an Aussie accent as thick as her comic charm.

Alas, there's a downside to Xanadu's success: It hurts. At the Gotham magazine party she guest-hosted for the revamped Renaissance New York Hotel, Kerry told me: "I go to physical therapy for my knees, I get massages, and I have to go in a roller before each show." I go to physical therapy for my knees too, but that's a whole other story.

There's no preparation Kerry can do for co-star Jackie Hoffman's ad libs, it turns out. "One time," she said, "there was a guy sitting in the onstage audience wearing a cap to the side. Jackie went up to him and said, 'What are you, a gay rapper?' I cracked up! He was most likely gay, because he was sitting onstage at Xanadu!" And it wasn't even "Boys Night."

It was everything night at the Spotlight Live party for Shannon Durig's 1,000th performance as the non–Jenny Craig client Tracy in Hairspray, meaning she's put on a fat suit more times than Spitzer's put on an investigator. Over girly screams for dreamy co-star Ashley Parker Angel, Durig told me that when the audience gets super hyped up, sometimes she feels like a rock star. But she doesn't act like a rock star; Durig doesn't even drink coffee, "though I like Nacho Mondays with an occasional margarita." I pulled Angel away from the estrogen bunch to ask what his stimulant of choice is, and he said: "Vitamin-water energy drinks, because they combine caffeine with guarana." I'm sticking to my beloved Diet Coke—though at the bar for the party, they wanted to charge me four bucks for one. Not kidding!

Let's clink-clink our nacho plates and wash it down with some quick takes for the easily bored: Touch, the sleek club on West 52nd Street, debuted its Tuesday gay night last week with a bar that lights up when you touch it—and they touch it a lot—and a lovely ice sculpture for hemp iced tea (but not vitamin-water energy drinks) . . . At the same evening's Beige bash over at B Bar, I recently wore a sweater with a furry baby seal on it and am proud of myself for advising one guy: "Go ahead! Club it with your dick!" . . . Logo will be doing an awards show this summer. That's all I can say at this moment, or Price Waterhouse will kill me.

In other honors, I hear Obama already has a potential running mate lined up, just in case: It's a Middle-America-type Democrat who's a Vietnam vet with war creds. Then again, this information comes from the wife of a food critic . . . Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if Obama could stand up and say: "I agree with a lot of what that pastor says! We do act like terrorists sometimes. And whitey is a mean, oppressing motherfucker who's made life hell for us!"? And if Geraldine Ferraro could stand up and bray: "I have to admit, I was idiotic to suggest that being a black man would be someone's entrée into the White House! Perhaps the fact that not one black has ever been allowed to come close would have been a pretty good clue!"? . . . The very white Jodie Foster has gone right back into the safety of her closet. Read my blog for more details . . . I hear that after being interviewed by Anderson Cooper, Kristen's nervy pimp Jason Itzler was seriously asking people: "Was Anderson impressed by me?" Dumb ho! . . . As I recently blogged, Elliot Spitzer is an idiot too. I would have fucked him for nothing!

At last week's gala NLGJA dinner at the Times Center, Anna Nicole chronicler Rita Cosby told me that she recently had lunch with Spitzer, but he didn't make a pass at her—I asked! Also there, some press person offered to send a promotional umbrella (ella, ella, eh, eh . . . ) to Carson Kressley. She then moved on to another Queer Eye guy and asked: "Can I send you an umbrella? Carson just agreed to it." The guy said "Sure," then as the woman walked away, he was heard telling his date: "Shit! Kressley's here!" Now that would have made a good reality show.

So would the other fun scenario I was told about that night—that when The New York Times' Web editor came back from a trip and saw the breaking story on his site about Spitzer's whore problems, he said: "Oh, no! We've been hacked!" He actually thought someone had broken into the site and posted a hoax story! And that's probably what Silda Spitzer thought too!

Some of the scandal names have been changed in Brian Antoni's South Beach: The Novel, a tempestuous roman à clef that revels in SoBe's whory glory days. "All right, spill, kid," I demanded at Antoni's house party for the book. "Who are the characters based on?" "There's a gay gossip columnist who's into s&m," Antoni obliged. "That's based on Tom Austin—though he's straight—combined with a guy who was found murdered on the beach. There's also an Italian designer—ask anyone in Miami and they'll know who it is—and a Cuban gangster." And the reaction this is getting from the gangsters and sadomasochists? "I got new locks for my place down there," Antoni replied. Well, I'm still gonna break in and mess up the joint for not basing the gay s&m gossip columnist on me. Bitch!